


A Line in the Sand

by Orockthro



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Gen, Set mid season 1, Ten in Ten Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-12
Updated: 2013-09-12
Packaged: 2017-12-26 08:27:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/963788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orockthro/pseuds/Orockthro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finch sat, alone and still, in the back corner booth. She walked towards him with the ferocity and clarity of soul being a mother first and a soldier second had taught her. She dropped Taylor’s laptop heavily on the formica table. “This, whatever the hell all this is, ends the second you bring my kid into it. You were watching us. Never again, do you understand?”</p>
<p>(Or, post Number Crunch in Season 1, Carter gets her feet under her.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Line in the Sand

**Author's Note:**

> A WIP dredged out for Astolat's 10 in 10 challenge. Thanks to Cortue for a "10 minutes before posting" beta run over, and to rose_griffes for looking at it an ice age ago.

Carter opened the fridge up and let the cold, stale air hit her in the face. It was five twenty in the morning and dark in the apartment (not to mention smelly and stuffy, thanks to Taylor’s ‘get buff in time for school to start’ routine), but she left the lights off and the windows closed. No reason to wake Taylor up. There was miraculously enough milk for cereal so she sank into a kitchen chair and tried very hard not to think about anything.

Her flip phone buzzed and “unknown caller” flashed on the read out. So much for a morning to herself. She whipped it against her shoulder and hoped the pouring cheerios were loud and obnoxious as they pinged against the corelle ware bowl. "You have really bad timing, anyone ever tell you that?"

"Good morning, detective."

Carter blinked. She'd expected John, not the four eyed helper, the not-Burdette. She was still upset with him, more than she was with John, for playing her like a fool and then playing her again by keeping her and Fusco in the dark about each other.

"What do you want?" Because it was six goddamned fifteen in the morning and she hadn't even had her coffee yet.

"Our mutual friend needs your help," and before Carter could interrupt the pause and swear that she'd heard that line just one time too many he added, "again," in the peeved tone of voice he carried so well.

The cheerios stared up at her, uneaten and growing soggy. "What kind of help are we talking. The 'I risk my ass to make sure he still has one' or the 'I risk my career doing things I really shouldn't' kind?"

Not-Burdette didn't say anything for a long time. Finally he cleared his throat. "You are, of course, free to decline."

The street lamp outside flickered off. Dawn had come. "Just... tell me what to do."

In the end she left fifty dollars and a shopping list for Taylor (and a stick figure and a heart) and donned her bullet proof vest.

She had to use her badge but not her gun and John was in one piece by the end of it, so she called it a win.

 

She and not-Burdette were fine. If they didn't talk much, that was fine too, it just meant John wasn't doing anything incredibly stupid. Until Taylor was on the sofa with the TV set to some stupid show about snakes, texting like crazy on his phone, and said, "Hey mom, you know the laptop camera is on?”

“What?”

“The laptop. The light’s on, that means the camera’s on.” It was Taylor’s laptop, one he had for school. She used it sometimes, but never for work. Right now she was looking at her mom’s photos from their recent trip up north.

It could all have been a coincidence, some program she was running that used the camera even though she didn’t know about it. But then the light flickered off, almost guiltily. She was a detective, after all.

Carter was out the door and down to the street before she’d even gotten her badge slung around her neck. She re-dialed the only number on the flip phone as she walked.

“We’re meeting. You and me. Now.”

Finch sat, alone and still, in the back booth of the diner where Mark Snow had met her. She walked towards himwith the ferocity and clarity of soul being a mother first and a soldier second had taught her. She dropped Taylor’s laptop heavily on the formica table. “This, whatever the hell all this is, ends the second you bring my kid into it. You were watching us. Never again, do you understand?”

Finch sat stiller than she’d ever seen him. His hands lay flat on the table near a perspiring water glass and he said very quietly and very evenly, “Very well, detective.”

 

And it was ‘very well’ for two weeks. John still contacted her about jobs that she could help on and as far as she knew, Taylor was just happy about his new laptop, one with top of the line security. Even if it wouldn’t do much, it made her feel better. She took the old one to the shooting range and emptied a clip into it.

Helping people, John’s mission and the glasses guy’s too, Carter was down for that. She was even down for risking her hide a few times to make sure the two of them came back in one piece. But there was no way in hell she was about to let her baby get drawn into this shit before he graduated high school.

It was late and she was still at work, hating whoever designed her office chair with a tight fury, when John called. It was a sad reality that she actually enjoyed hearing his voice now. It meant he was alive, which was something these days. “Late night, Carter,” John ground out in that deep whisper he and Batman perfected.

Carter smiled into the speaker. “Same to you. But the bad guys don’t sleep. What can I do for you?”

“Nothing dangerous.”

“Your idea of dangerous and mine are a little different sometimes.” She didn’t say his name out loud, even though she was sure Fusco wouldn’t put anything together.

“I need you stop keeping Finch out of the loop.”

Carter hung up on him.

Fusco stared at her from his desk. "What crawled up your butt?" he asked, but there was concern on his face. She still didn't trust him, not completely; Carter didn't trust many people, and none of them completely. But Fusco had been there for her lately.

“There’s this creep that’s been hanging out around Taylor.” She hoped Finch was listening.

Fusco looked at her for a long while. He was good at that. Not great at interrogations, but better than he let on at quietly observing. "Talk to Taylor about it?"

Carter narrowed her eyes. "It isn't Taylor who's the creep."

"I know. Relax, okay. I just mean, talk to your kid about it. You'll feel better. And then, if the creep is still a problem, tell me, and I'll bust his ass down to New Mexico.” Fusco raised his eyebrows at her and quired his mouth.

Joss stared at him for a second longer than she probably should have. “Yeah, yeah you’re probably right, Fusco.” It was too easy to forget he was a parent, too.

John didn't call her back and she went home feeling strange, incomplete, like someone had taken out a piece of her and hid it somewhere. It was almost eleven thirty and Taylor's light was off. She knocked on his door twice and sat down on the end of his bed.

"Mom? Everything okay?" She loved him, god she loved him.

"Sure sweetie, everything's fine."

She couldn't see him very well in the dark, but she could feel his eyes roll at her. "Yeah, well, you don't call me sweetie unless someone died."

"No one died. Just... wanted to say goodnight.”

Taylor sat up and flicked the lamp next to his bed on. Carter did her best to ignore the piles of clothes on the floor. “You sure everything’s okay, mom?”

"Yeah. Everything’s fine. I just,” she leaned down and planted an overdramatic kiss on his hair like she used to when he was a kid, “miss you, you know. You grew up. See you tomorrow, alright?"

He turned off the lamp and she walked out of the room. She sat down at her kitchen table and tried to imagine how this night would have been if John hadn't been caught defending himself on camera against those homeless-beating rich kids. She couldn't.

Her phone was silent and dark when she set it on the table but Carter knew that didn't matter. She started talking. "So. I'm still pissed you know. At John too. My life, my kid’s life, is my business, not yours." She took a deep breath. "And don't think for a second I'm innocent enough to believe it's as simple as all this."

The phone stared at her, unringing and silent and Carter hated it. "I'm still pissed. But if you need to call me, you know, in the future. That's okay."

Carter went to bed and dreamed of eyes and falling.

 

Four days later her phone rang. "I'm still pissed at you," she said as she flipped it open, not waiting to hear which one of them it was. It was John. She ducked into the ladies room of the bank she was at and glared at the woman doing her makeup until she left. "But I can ignore that for now. What's going on?"

Because John was John he didn't tell her, just spouted off a location near the docks and hung up. Yup. She was still pissed.

It wasn't just 'near the docks' she revised as she pulled up and threw the car into park, it was the docks. A barbed wire fence separated her and endless shipping containers, the black boxes of the transportation world. She flashed her badge and the gate opened. The guy in the security box didn't even look at her face, just saw the gold gleam of her shield and flipped the switch.

"You want to tell me what I'm doing here?" she said into her phone. It was near midnight and place was dead quiet.

"I’m busy at the moment," John rasped and a shot rang through the speaker of the phone, compressed but recognisable. "Finch could use a hand."

She craned her neck. There had to be thousands of shipping containers here. She was living a cliche. "And let me guess. You don't know where he is."

"You're the detective, Detective."

“Seriously? You seriously used that line?” There was a low tone as he hung up and she snapped the phone shut.

Finch could use a hand. What the hell did that even mean? Finch was in the middle of the world's quietest firefight and needed a cop to bust him out? Finch needed someone to help him move his new collection of miniature ponies?

There was a bang. It was deep and resonant and Carter's weapon was out and in front of her before the echo finished thundering through the concrete landscape.

A scrawny guy sat in the cab of a magnetic crane, fifty yards ahead. She couldn't make out much of him in the orange street lamp light, but he looked about as reputable as some of Fusco's 'friends.' He moved slightly and the machine shuddered into life again, picking up a green shipping container with the electromagnetic hoist and dragging it deeper into the darkness.

“You, drop it!”

And he did. The electric hoist released with a ‘snick’ and the container, which had been hovering two feet in the air, dropped with a boom loud enough to send Carter reeling. The man in the cab took off running and the police officer in her wanted nothing more than to take off after him. Gun still extended she let him run and instead closed the distance between her and the shipping container. It was padlocked shut with an impressive chain, but two quick shots to the lock mechanism sent it clattering to the ground.

“Finch?”

The inside of the container was black. She clicked on her tactical flashlight and braced her gun arm against it. A single lump half sat, half lay in the middle of the floor. “Finch, you okay?” She did a quick sweep, but other than Finch the container was empty. It was too dark to make much else out about him, even as she got close and squatted beside him. He looked alright, there were no obvious bullet holes and no pools of blood.

He looked up at her, half stunned, probably from the drop and the sound. His eyes were invisible in the dark, only the flashlight reflecting off his glasses, a pair of bright rectangles that glowed like cat eyes, gave away where his head was. “I’m fine, Detective.” His voice shook a little, but not so much that she was overly worried.

“Come on, let’s get you out of here,” she said and took his arm to help him up.

There was a creak and a groan, the bite of metal on metal, and without more than a second’s warning the doors to the shipping container swung shut. Without thinking twice Carter let go of Finch, dropped her shoulder and rammed it with all her weight. It budged once but a metal clank marked the sound of the padlock sliding into place.

“No!” She slapped a hand against the door. “Open this right now! You hear me? I’m Detective Carter with the NYPD. Open this door or I’ll have your ass in jail!”

Silence.

“Well.” There was a shuffle behind her and a hiss. She flashed her light back to Finch to find him with his back to the side of the container, sitting up and stretching his legs out in front of him. “I apologize, Detective. I’m sure this wasn’t how you planned to spend your Friday evening.”

“Not exactly, no,” she tried for wry but ended up with tired. She wanted to be in a bath right now, with a good book waiting on her nightstand. “But it shouldn’t surprise me.” She paced the length of the container from end to end. Her phone, almost blinding in the dark, was open and dialing Reese. “Come on, come on.”

No answer.

“Mr. Reese was dealing with another matter this evening, hence my being here alone. I doubt you’ll be able to reach him right away.”

“And why _are_ you here, huh? And what is John doing _exactly_?” She snapped the flip phone shut and it echoed in the dark. The single illumination of the flashlight, on the floor in the middle, pointed at the closest wall, seemed brighter now that her eyes were beginning to adjust. Finch still looked immaterial, a pile of clothes and glasses and shadows.

“I know you dislike being uninformed, Detective, but-”

“No. What I _dislike_ is people like you lying to my face. Deliberately hiding what’s going on, manipulating me, and expecting me to do what you want anyway.”

“And yet here you are.”

Joss closed her eyes. Green dots swam under her eyelids, pricks of light left over from staring at the flashlight because it was preferable to staring at Finch. “And yet here I am.”

“I didn’t want to involve you at all, you know.” Finch’s voice was light and calm. “John doesn’t always listen to me and he is much more forgiving than I am. I didn’t,” he paused, “I didn’t want to endanger you, but mostly I didn’t want you to endanger us. I thought you would betray us. And you did. So you understand my hesitance in the matter.”

Agent Snow and the parking garage were fresh in her mind. John dropping to the dirty concrete, showers of headlight glass and plastic, joined memories of Iraq that would be seared into her mind until she died. “I was doing my job.”

“And now?”

And that was the question. Finch, not-Burdette, the man who’d been lying to her ever since she’d first seen him on that security camera footage in the vault, wanted to know if she was his. The silence was uncomfortable. “If I learned one thing while in Iraq it is that men can do bad things, even for their country, even in defense of what’s right. If you or John cross that line, I will take you in for it. But until you cross that line, I’ll help you. But let me in. I can’t help you like this, on the outside.”

She heard Finch take a deep breath. Good, she thought, maybe he realized the line they were toeing too. “Very well, Detective. I’ll try.”

The chain on the outside of shipping container rattled and the door opened. John, barely visible in the fluorescent illumination of the streetlights outside, stood in the doorway, a shadow with a gun. “Finch, Detective Carter,” he said, “glad you had time to chat.” She could hear his smile, the bastard. He had a key in his hand.

Joss strode past him, not looking at Finch behind her. “Next time you want to play camp counselor, bring cookies,” and brushed past him. “And Finch,” she turned and saw the man struggling to stand up, John at his side, “I meant what I said.”

She walked to her car, watched the shipping yard disappear in her rearview mirror, and drove home to her son.

 


End file.
